E.T. and The Fermi Paradox: Are We Alone in the Cosmos?

“Where are they?” Despite decades of searching and listening, the famous question posed by physicist Enrico Fermi remains a mystery. Are humans unique?

This story begins with Joseph. Some of you might remember Joseph, the friend and fellow prisoner I wrote of in “Disperse the Gloomy Clouds of Night” awhile back. Joseph came into this prison six years ago with a “rep” that was very difficult to climb out from under in the gang culture of prison life. A young, street-tough, African American man, Joseph comes from an existence entirely alien to the world of my priesthood. My sole exposure to it has come from two places: television and prison, and the latter is a world I have never been prepared for. In this world, Joseph is not an alien. I am.

It’s an odd thing, the diversity of human life and experience. On the surface, Joseph and I are about as different as two human beings can be, and yet we are now the best of friends. For our two disparate worlds to communicate required finding some common ground that was not easy to discover. Joseph trusts no one – except me, he insists – and he thinks I trust everyone far too openly. I once described to Joseph what it was like trying to communicate when we first met. I said I felt a bit like Mr. Spock on the bridge of the Star Ship Enterprise, trying to open a channel to the Klingon battle cruiser hovering nearby. Joseph erupted in laughter.

It was funny, but since then I’ve learned that Joseph’s tough exterior masks a brilliant mind fascinated by science, and a soul in search of truth. We’ve had long discussions about the topic of this post, and Joseph can’t wait to read it. So humor me for a few moments, please. I’m not quitting the priesthood to apply to Starfleet Academy or anything, but there’s a new development in the sciences of astronomy and cosmology that you may have heard about in the news, and I have been caught in its tractor beam.

Resistance is futile! Don’t click that backspace button to close this post just yet. Of the nearly 140 posts I’ve written for These Stone Walls, only two have been about space science, my other preoccupation. “A Day Without Yesterday,” about the great Belgian physicist-priest, Father Georges Lemaitre, told the story of how he changed the mind Of Albert Einstein about the created universe. His concept of the origin of the Universe from the primordial atom or “Big Bang” was suppressed by some scientists because Father Lemaitre was a Catholic priest.

What we know about the Cosmos is changing quickly. When I last saw freedom in 1994, astronomers theorized that there must be planets beyond our own Solar System, but there was no evidence of a single one. Over the last eighteen years, numerous distant planets have been discovered, but most are gas giants like the outer planets of our own Solar System, and others are either too close or too far from their host stars – their suns – to be habitable.

Over the past few months, a discovery by the Kepler Space Telescope has generated a wave of excitement among astronomers. It was best described in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “An Otherworldly Discovery: Billions of Planets” (Robert Lee Hotz, January 12, 2012). This is a phenomenal discovery that could drastically alter how we view our place in the Universe for centuries to come. Billions of planets – many very much like Earth – are revolving around billions of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Whether we are alone remains an open question, but our Earth most definitely is not.

One of these recent discoveries – given the not-so-romantic name, “Kepler 22-B” by astronomers, has been deemed to be in the “habitable zone.” A planet a lot like Earth, it is close enough to its sun to be nourished by it. If it were just a bit further, like Mars, it would be frozen and barren. A bit closer, like Venus, would make it a molten cauldron. Both would be inhospitable to the development of life as we know it. Kepler 22-B appears to be our first discovery of a planet that’s just about right for life to take hold and evolve.

But don’t plan to vacation there just yet. Kepler 22-B is 600 light years away. You may recall from “A Day Without Yesterday” that a light year is a measure of distance, not time. It is the distance light will travel through space in one of our years. Light travels at a measurable rate of approximately 186,000 miles per second. At that speed, light will travel 5.86 trillion miles (that’s 5,860,OOO,OOO,OOO) in one year. This distance is called a light year, and Kepler 22-B is 600 times that distance from Earth. Please don’t make me convert this to kilometers. [Editor’s Note: About 9,460,000,000,000 kilometers] With the fastest rocket system ever developed on Earth, it would take 24 million years to get there.

This means that if someone living on Kepler 22-B had a super telescope that could see a close-up view of life on Earth, the Kepler 22-Being would see Earth and its civilization as it was in the year 1412. It would be another two centuries before Galileo first used a telescope to view the heavens from Earth. It would be another five centuries before Marconi demonstrated that electromagnetic waves could carry signals and communications in what would become known as “radio.” It would be five and-a-half centuries before humans could combine those two technologies into radio astronomy, the detection of radio waves traveling from elsewhere in our galactic neighborhood.

Using radio astronomy, science first learned of the existence of the quasar in 1964, and the pulsar in 1967. These features of our galaxy and others, and the stars they contain, emit naturally occurring radio waves that can be detected and measured. One of the features we can measure is distance. We have learned from radio astronomy that our galaxy is a disk of star systems about 100,000 light years across, and it is home to more than 100 billion stars. We have learned that the light and radio signals we can observe from across our galaxy is many tens of thousands of years old at the time we observe it.

Until 1924, our Milky Way galaxy was thought to be the only one in existence. It comprised the entire Universe. By the time I was an eight-year-old reading Superman comics, there were 28 known galaxies. Now, thanks to the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope and its “Deep Field” observations, there are over 100 billion galaxies millions, even billions, of light years away. The Universe is very large, and it can make me feel very small.

And yet, as I pointed out in “A Day Without Yesterday,” Father Georges Lemaitre has demonstrated that all this creation, and time itself, came into being at a specific point in cosmological history, and on the day before that, there was absolutely nothing. Father Lemaitre lobbied Pope Pius XI to avoid using science to bolster statements of faith, but in my mind, and now my friend, Joseph’s as well – and Pope Pius XI agreed, too – Father Georges Lemaitre put science and faith on the same page, in this one crucial concept, a created Universe. It was this page:

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters.” (Genesis 1:1)

SO, “WHERE ARE THEY?”

Working on the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, New Mexico in 1943, physicist Enrico Fermi posed this question to his fellow scientists. It came to be known as “The Fermi Paradox” and here is the gist of it. Our galaxy is 10 to 15 billion years old, according to cosmologists, and contains over 100 billion stars. Fermi presumed them to have planets, and now we know that he was right. So in the course of over ten billion years, at least one civilization must have emerged somewhere that developed the technology for interstellar communication using a technology humans discovered a century ago: radio waves. The mathematics of scientific odds dictates that this simply must be. So, where are they? This became the basis of the SETI project, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.

The Fermi Paradox posed a challenge to science. Radio astronomy was developed in the 1930s, and by the 1950s science was devoting ample time and technology to the SETI project. If any other civilization exists out there, it will be discovered in just this way. The idea that little green men are visiting us, or have ever visited us, does not hold up against scientific reality. Einstein demonstrated a basic law of physics that nothing travels through space faster than light. If people on Kepler 22-B exist, it would take them thousands of years to get here despite the fact that their 600 light years distance from us places them in our own backyard in galactic terms. We would hear their signals thousands of years before we could possibly meet them. And the signal we hear will be at least 600 years old when we hear it. We won’t be trading recipes or playing space chess.

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

For nearly sixty years, we have had the ability to filter out all naturally occurring radio chatter to listen for something intentional. Rut to date, we have heard nothing but silence from every corner of the galaxy we have listened to, and we have listened intently. The silence is startling. There is no evidence whatsoever – not a shred – that points to the existence of anyone even remotely like us anywhere else but on Earth. Mathematics – the science of sheer odds – says there must be, but to date, at least, there is no one.

Whether or not we are alone in the Cosmos may never be fully answered for science, but I am not at all alone in my thinking about what these planetary discoveries mean and don’t mean for the discovery of extraterrestrial life. The late novelist-scientist-physician, Michael Crichton, had a great article, published posthumously, in the excellent Catholic journal, Annals Australasia (“Consensus Politics and Junk Science,” 25 October 2011). He had this to say about why SETI and science have parted ways;

“SETI is not science. SETI is unquestionably a religion. Faith is defined as the firm belief in something for which there is no proof. The belief that God created the universe in seven days is a matter of faith. The belief that there are other life forms in the universe is a matter of faith. There is not a single shred of evidence [for science] to maintain this belief.”

In purely scientific circles, the emerging news about new planets all over the galaxy is accompanied by a developing theory called the “rare earth” theory. I believe it has merit. There are aspects of our planet that may make it exceedingly rare, if not unique. Simply locating a planet like Kepler 22-B in “the habitable zone” near its sun some 600 light years away tells us nothing about life. There are lots of other factors, and when you weigh all of them, the mathematics – the sheer odds against life existing at all – are overwhelming. Life like us should not exist anywhere. But it exists here, and it’s a cosmological crime to squander it.

Here are a few examples from the “rare Earth” theory: Jupiter is a massive planet with a massive gravitational pull. It is placed in just the right position in our Solar System to prevent most life-extinction events that could have taken place on Earth through the bombardment of giant asteroids over millennia. Jupiter is like a Solar System vacuum cleaner that protects inner planets. The Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet that gave Jupiter a mere black eye in 1994 could have utterly obliterated life on Earth.

Yet Earth has had just enough cosmic bombardments early in its life to create and maintain a spinning molten core that in turn creates a strong electromagnetic field that protects our planet from cosmic solar rays that would otherwise have destroyed Earth’s atmosphere – and all life – eons ago.

Earth’s Moon is just large enough, and at just the right distance from Earth, to stabilize our planet against the destabilizing gravitational influences of both our Sun and Jupiter. This has prevented massive shifts in Earth’s polarity and maintained tides and seasons while preventing too frequent global ice ages. The relationship between Earth, our Moon, and life is complex, ancient, and not yet fully understood. And is it mere chance that our Moon is of a size and distance that allows for a perfect solar eclipse? The odds against such a phenomenon are . . . well . . . astronomical.

I found some recent support for how these factors make life here unique in a new book by John Gribbin, Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet is Unique (Wiley, 2012). There was a great review of it by Alan Hirshfield in The Wall Street Journal (“The Loneliest Planet,” Dec. 31, 2011 – Jan. 1, 2012) Summarizing the book’s conclusions, Mr. Hirshfield wrote:

“As John Gribbin points out in his grimly plausible book, there is a world of difference between ‘habitable’ planets and ‘inhabited’ planets . . . The author’s conclusion: Earth is the sole abode of intelligent life in the galaxy, the result of a profoundly improbable sequence of cosmic, geologic, and climactic events . . .”

For Father Georges Lemaitre, for me, and now for my friend, Joseph, there comes a point when “a profoundly improbable sequence” of events crosses a border into the profoundly impossible. Science has promised a better explanation for centuries, but it hasn’t ever delivered one. Creation and our Creator become the sole rational explanation for what seems otherwise irrational and impossible: life itself, and not just life, us! – the impossible mathematical odds against the very existence with which we ponder Him.

And thus far, at least, we ponder Him alone.

“I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God’s thoughts; the rest are details.” Albert Einstein

About Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles and The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus encouraged Father MacRae to write. Cardinal Dulles wrote in 2005: “Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and will be instrumental in a reform. Your writing, which is clear, eloquent, and spiritually sound will be a monument to your trials.” READ MORE

Comments

This a great article! Since I can remember as a child I have been fascinated with “God and the vastness of our universe and why it is that way”. I have always had three thoughts about this:

1. God knew what He was doing, as was stated in your article, when He set up our solar system so that life could thrive on this big blue Garden of Eden we call Earth.

2. God knew what He was doing when he made the nearest stars and possible habitable planets so far away. By the time we as human beings are able to find out for ourselves if there is life ‘out there’ whether through advancements in telescopes, warp speed travel, or broadcast signals arriving here, we should be mature enough to handle it.

3. (I pondered this question back in the 1970’s long before Star Trek – TNG was a reality.) If the day comes that we make contact with beings not of this Earth, what happens if they have a “God and bible” that guides their faith and this “alien bible” has the exact same Ten Commandments that our Christian bible has?

Lastly, I am a mailman and have been for over 30 years. I studied greatly when I was in school which is why over the years my kids have asked me repeatedly, “Dad, how do you know so much?”, haha. Having studied science, having belief and faith in God, recognizing our “own free will”, and having an open mind, I have always felt that people, including Charles Darwin, have ‘missed the point’. Creation is cornerstone. Evolution is a tool that God created to enable “all creatures great and small” grow and survive. I don’t believe we descended from apes. I do believe we were created by God. I do not know how any of this was done in the past other than what is stated in Genesis. That is where my faith comes into play and keeps me humble and strong.

This is a wonderful comment, and I thank you for it. I have written a couple of other similar articles since this one was posted and they are along the lines of the very points you make. The one I recommend, and you could easily find it on Google using quotes, is “Are we Alone? Yuri Milner’s Breakthrough Initiatives.” That will also have some links to some of the others. Thank you so much for this great comment and for reading.
With blessings in Holy Week,
Father Gordon

Well I will toss out a thought on the rare earth and main sequence stars. And tie it back to StarTrek – Next generation, not original.

One episode has the Federation, the Kingons, Romulans, Ferengi and others searching for some lost genetic treasure or something. Eventually they arrive on a planet long dead where a recording shows up and says “we are a race that got off our planet and found the universe was empty, and we left parts of our genetic code on the other planets we found as a way of leading you here” or something like that. It could have been an attempt to explain in universe why all the aliens looked human. Out of universe, well it keeps production costs down.

Interesting Fun Fact, when you look at what are called main sequence stars with the age of our sun, most of those are composed of lighter elements. To find main sequence stars with the density of the higher elements that our system has, you discover those stars are only about 3 to 3.5 billion years old. This means that the Sol system has a higher share of non hydrogen/helium and is more likely to support complex molecules needed for life.

So assuming God uses evolution and it progresses at a similar rate in other locations; we literally could be that race that left clues of itself in the star trek tng episode. Life on Earth could be the first of all.

Thank you, Mr Catelli, for this excellent comment. I remember very well that episode Star Trek TNG. It was among my favorites. Your observation is intriguing and supports the notion that there is much that makes this solar system special and perhaps even unique. With thanks and blessings, Father Gordon

Another good article, Fr. Gordon. I had to slow down though and read every word. Although I was a science major in college (biology) and enjoy looking at the stars (most of the stars I know were learned in Liberia where the sky is brilliant—-no electricity up country then), I’m not really a science person. I was tempted to “push the back button” on this one. So glad I didn’t. You write about science (and everything else) with such intelligence and skill that it is understandable even for the non-science among us. Wish I had read this before reading Contact.

Excellent food for thought, Fr. G. There seems to be a very curious unstated assumption in the OP and some comments that life can somehow spontaneously appear from non-life. This has never been known to happen, and it is a scientific principle that it does not and will not happen (the Law of Abiogenesis). If there are in fact other habitable planets (the possibility of which now seems to be receding again) it is quite another question as to whether God has created or will create life on those planets. That is the only way that it could arise. I suspect that He has not done it, nor intends to do it. There is no indication in the Bible of life beyond Earth apart from the angels. There is ample observational evidence that the Earth is rather close to the centre of the Universe: Man, created in His image, is God’s focus – all else is created for a combination of our benefit and His glory.

Loved this article, Father. You put to rest with excellent logic the questions I’ve had about the universe. I’ve always believed that we are unique in creation because of everything in Genesis. That final quote from Einstein is perfect. “Everything else is details.” Of course, knowing how God thinks means having a relationship with Him. Relationship means making time for Him in prayer and contemplation.

Hi Father Gordon: It is my pleasure to read your posts and this one was kind of interesting to me because in my mental quest to understand the mystery of creation while being subjected to sci-fi media, I remember asking my husband if he thought that God was an “alien”, to which he replied of course He is an alien (meaning to us).

But where is Heaven and how can God ressurect the body? Is He an alien from another world, or most likely another demension? And who begot God? Do you think He is a different life form who created our World as an experiment in science? How much faith is enough? Where is Heaven, where is pergatory? I don’t even want to know where hell is (right know I may be convinced by those people who insist it is on Earth since my husband and I are disabled, in constant pain and homeless after caring for my mother for not just here whole life but the last 12 yrs after her hospitalizations only to have my “Christian Brother” tske the insurance money she promised me and let our home of 47 yrs be foreclosed on by the county and the bank (along with all of our belongings due to the fact that we have no truck or storage, and are unable to even pack (He has resources and four grown sons that could help)

I do not want to become embittered since my whole life I have housed and fed the homeless and the hungry, among other things and taken in every stray lost animal I could find. So, please try to explain to me how God is going to come to judge the living and the dead, and where will he take me?Surely I will be somewhere on the far side of the chasm along with Lasarus the begger, right? But where do Jesus go when he ascended? Do you think he was beamed up to a spaceship andMary at Fatima was similiarly explained as well as the dancing sun? If our Earth is the only planet that can support our lifeform, what form do you think we will have after death? And will we be transported to another Universe? Just wondering how you look at this because I need God to come for me pretty soon. ALSO, You are such an inspiration to so many that I feel very guilty for my fears and loneliness. Please pray for me Father,and I will for you.

Hi fr. Gordon!
If we believe that God can create something as awesome as this then why do we have such a problem putting our trust in Him?
Why do we feel that He doesn’t help us?
We have a wonderful God and He is here for us if we accept Him.
It is our free will that stops us from being all that we can be.
Loved it Father~ someday we will know the answers to it all!
God bless you and all, your friend,
Jeannie

Manay thanks for the very interesting and provocative article about the possibility of life in the Universe. I thought it was very well done from the perspective of physics, logic, and faith. Ultimately I assume that it comes down to a question of whether or not God has chosen to create other planets with intelligent life – even though, of course, He may well have done so according to the physical laws and phenomeon that He himself created. It would be interesting to speculate further as to the condition of ingtelligent life elsewhere – do they need Redemption? How are they related to Christ? What plan might God have in mind for them in regards to eternity? etc.

Manay thanks for the very interesting and provocative article about the possibility of life in the Universe. I thought it was very well done from the perspective of physics, logic, and faith. Ultimately I assume that it comes down to a question of whether or not God has chosen to create other planets with intelligent life – even though, of course, He may well have done so according to the physical laws and phenomeon that He himself created. It would be interesting to speculate further as to the condition of ingtelligent life elsewhere – do they need Redemption? How are they related to Christ? What plan might God have in mind for them in regards to eternity? etc.

I remember reading that Cornell university astronomer Carl Sagan wrote to you after you reviewed his book Contact in 1985. He obviously liked your review, and told you that “you write in the spirit of Father Georges Lemaitre.” Now I understand why Carl Sagan wrote that. I think father Lemaitre would have been proud to see his name in this article. And I think you are right about E.T. Your message is very clear. Human life is unique, and must not be squandered.

Aloha Father:
Wow! This week’s post went a little over my head but I am sure my husband will enjoy it very much!

BTW, as I was updating my mom about you (she often asks about you), I had her read some of your posts. She believes that God permitted you to be incarcerated for a reason…you are touching the lives of so many of your fellow prisoners. We continue to pray that you are released someday soon. In the meantime, we pray for the success of your ministry while you are there.

Well, dear Fr., I am not a science buff and you almost lost me, several times. What I ponder most here is how remarkable God is.

Here you are an educated priest in a prison where you should not be, and yet you have befriended this inmate from another world as you inferred. You have found common ground in your liking of science fiction, aka Star Trek. That is pretty incredible to me. But, I am a simple mind.

I am blessed to have faith. If I had to rely on my understanding of all the things science has presented to us, well, I would be right where I usually am, behind the 8 ball.

Thanks be to God for you and me and all those who made such interesting comments. And thanks be to God for allowing you and Joseph to meet and become friends. He does have a plan.

Hi Fr.
That was a great meditation on creation. Thank you. It occured to me that the impossible odds against the creation and existence of this earth is analogous to the odds against any one sperm fertilizing any one egg and becoming any one of us! Thank you, God.
Lupe

I can’t believe I read this. I hate math. I read a few paragraphs and would stop but I started to get interested in it. The last paragraph was the zinger. Albert Einstein said it best: I want to know God’s thoughts. The rest are details. The great scientist that he was shows he had a simple faith. That made me feel so good.
Once again, Father, the teacher came out. I learn so much from these posts. Thank you! Maybe if I had you for math in high school, I would have been able to sleep in….but summer school in geometry was a must. God bless you. You are the best.

There could be travel through black holes, and life could exist in the middle of stars or in dark matter. All our knowledge could be simply “Straw” as Saint Thomas Aquinas put it. I’ve been interested in UFOs since I was a kid but the ones I have been interested in are the ‘nuts & bolts’ kind. In 1997 a group of us came out of a Church (Catholic) meeting and all watched the famous Phoenix Lights phenomenon. Were they real or some kind of an illusion?

I am not a scientist, never played one in a movie, and never pretended to be one but my conclusion is this. If the alien visuals a hoax, and not the real thing, we are dealing with demonic activity and I say this because the devil will use any tool possible to fool the faithful.

Father,
There are a few things that are left out in most of these articles. Thanks to Fr. Lemaitre we have a mathematical model of the Big Bang and eventually science was able to calculate the age of the universe. Yet there are many important things we do not have a clue as to how they really work. Two of those are gravity and time. Yes we know and we are able to predict the effects of gravity, yes we can measure time or rather our apparent time. Yet we do not know much about the causes or origins of neither. Does time flow evenly or is it something more like a river that can go fast or slow depending on topography. Relativity seems to suggest the second option (not the topography, that’s metaphor, but the speed) and yet we know so precious little. Through revelation and the experience of a few saints, it seems that it is possible to move through time or at least to see the future or the past. We know God lives in the “nunc stans” a place where apparently there is no passage of time at all. In most of these speculations about life in other planets I have never heard of anyone proposing the logical possibility that we may be the first (or last.) I think any serious thinker should consider that first when considering these issues.

What I liked most about this blog is that we have no idea what to expect from week to week. This post is certainly not what I expected this week, and I almost didn’t read it. But I’m glad I did because it’s yet another home run. Thank you for writing so clearly about a subject so complex: where humankind stands in this vast Cosmos, and what all these new discoveries mean for us who still believe in our Creator. You not only made the science clear to me, but you have made science another clear means to faith. You see God’s Creation with great clarity and precision from behind those stone walls.

The earth itself has many forms of life; plant, fish, insect, animal and human, to name a few. To think life, in some form, does not exist “out there” in the limitless cosmos of countless galaxies is to hold on to the belief that the earth is flat.

Whether intelligent life exists in the universe is a different matter… that may depend on whether they are Democrat or Republican.

Except for a few hints in your article, it is difficult to conclude that you are in fact physically a prisoner of the state of New Hampshire. You have the clarity of a free man, and the wisdom of one, born of trials and tribulations.

You are a blessing to the Church in ways it cannot now know, but hopefully will see.

Yesterday, as I pondered on freedom, and imprisonment I wrote the following article for my own blog.